The Good, Bad and Ugly: Liverpool had little to celebrate against Wolves, with Jürgen Klopp getting exactly what he did not want. But one player stood out.

Liverpool will face a replay against Wolverhampton Wanderers, having been held to a draw in the FA Cup third round.

Despite naming a strong team, Jürgen Klopp could not engineer a victory. Liverpool once again had to come from behind, having conceded first, and then contrived to squander their hard-earned advantage, before nearly losing it all over again late on.

However, though Wolves were partial architects of their own undoing, the Liverpool goals did at least offer some positive signs. New boy Cody Gakpo played his part in the second, with Darwin Núñez getting a much-needed confidence booster with a neatly-taken opener.

Here are the three moments Liverpool.com picked out from the Reds’ 2-2 draw against Wolves.

Regardless of the performance, this would have been a remarkable occasion for Trent Alexander-Arnold, making his 250th appearance for Liverpool at the age of just 24. To nobody’s great surprise, he marked the milestone with a strong performance.

Defensively, he was not called upon too often, despite Liverpool coming under their fair share of pressure as a team. The work he did have to do was done competently — inevitably, it is the mistakes that get dissected, but his solid showing here was nothing out of the ordinary.

But it was going forward where he made a truly telling impact, as he has done so many times since forcing his way into Jürgen Klopp’s side as a teenager. It was his delicious cross that helped Núñez get back among the goals, arcing delightfully past the awaiting defence and into the Uruguayan’s stride. As the pundits said in the ITV studio at half-time — find another right-back who can play a ball like that. He is unique.

Liverpool will be hoping to see plenty more of that particular link-up with Núñez as Liverpool build their next-generation side. Currently, the growing pains are there for all to see. But one thing’s for certain: any future needs to be built around the quality of Alexander-Arnold.

The Bad

When Klopp named such a strong team, the message was clear. He did not want a replay. In that respect, this was the worst possible result.

Liverpool will at least be glad to still be in the competition, and will therefore have to accept the draw. They are, after all, the defending champions, having already surrendered their League Cup crown. Going out with such a whimper would have been very disappointing, especially with other shots at glory looking remote.

However, it adds to the fixture pile-up for a team that has looked desperately in need of a proper break from the moment the season got underway. Virgil van Dijk finally succumbed to injury in the previous fixture, and Klopp will fear similar such incidents as the football continues relentlessly.

Then again, even the World Cup pause didn’t seem to do too much for the players who got a rest. In purely performance terms, neither the problem nor the solution lies in giving the existing players a bit of extra time off. Unfortunately, the issues are far more underlying, with the team in need of a major refresh in the transfer market.

The Ugly

Sorry, Alisson, there’s no dodging this one. Almost certainly the Player of the Season for Liverpool so far, he can be forgiven his error, but it was a clanger of the highest order.

To some extent, Klopp simply has to accept these rare moments as a consequence of how his goalkeeper likes to play football. He is never afraid of a pass, and on another day his nonchalant shuttle out wide might have started a goal-creating move.

But so soon after a similarly poor error from Thiago, common sense dictated an abundance of caution. Two games running now, Liverpool have been handed an apparent lifeline, only to cast it aside within seconds. For a team in such poor form, everything is still so strangely casual, and that needs to change.

Alisson heeded this lesson the next time he received the ball under pressure, spraying it into touch rather than taking a risk. And while that provoked the ire of Andy Robertson — who’d be a goalkeeper, hey? — it at least prevented the situation from getting any worse. The uncomfortable reality is that Liverpool are in a backs-to-the-wall situation right now, and they might have to start finding ways to win ugly if they want to achieve their (adjusted) goals for the campaign.

Source: liverpool.com